Male View of Hysteria Presented in The Yellow Wallpaper Charlotte Perkins Gilman's short story "The Yellow Wallpaper" has been viewed as a work of supernatural horror or as a treatise feminist about the role of women in society. A careful analysis of Gilman's use of symbols reveals "The Yellow Wallpaper" as his response to the male view of hysteria from ancient times through the nineteenth century. " In "The Yellow Wallpaper" Gilman questions the validity of Hippocrates' theory of the wandering womb and Weir Mitchell's "rest cure." As he wrote in his essay "Why Did I Write the Yellow Wallpaper?", "[ the story] was not intended to make people go crazy, but to save people from going crazy..." (107). By his own account, Gilman's purpose in writing "The Yellow Wallpaper" was to educate and inform the public on the misinterpretation of hysterical symptoms. The word hysteria expresses the belief in the inferiority of women. As James Palis writes in The Hippocratic Concept of Hysteria: A Translation of the Original Texts: "Etymologically, the term usteria (hysteria) is derived. from ustera (hystera), the Greek word for womb, meaning an inferior position. Therefore, usteria denotes the suffering of the uterus, the most inferior organ of the woman" (226). The fact that the literal translation of hystera is "inferior position" reinforces the fact that since ancient times women were seen as physically inferior to men. Since the main physical difference between women and men is the presence of the uterus, psychological problems considered strictly feminine were attributed to some malfunction of the uterus, first proposed in his work "The Art of Healing", which l 'hysteria was ...... middle of the paper ....... "The Yellow Wallpaper". contexts. Thomas L. Erskine and Connie L. Richards. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 105-109.---. Yellow Wallpaper L. Richards. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1993. 109-111. Palis, James., et al. “The Hippocratic Concept of Hysteria: A Translation of the Original Texts.” Integrative Psychiatry 3.3 (1985): 226-228.